Police in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang have detained the owner of a factory suspected of selling chicken feed tainted with industrial chemical melamine that was later found in eggs.

The factory mixed an ingredient tainted with melamine into feed sold to the country's leading egg producer, Dalian Hanwei Enterprise Group.

A brand of Hanwei eggs was found late last month by Hong Kong food-safety regulators to contain excessive levels of melamine.

The owner of the Mingxing Feed Processing Factory, Gao Xingtao, was detained and the remaining tainted animal feed made by the factory destroyed, police said.

Gao told police his firm previously made feed with grain from distillers, however, when supplies became scarce in June, he started adding melamine, Xinhua News Agency reported yesterday.

Gao said he bought 45 tons of raw feed material containing melamine from other provinces on July 6 and 15.

His firm then produced 287 tons of chicken feed containing 40 tons of the tainted material, 212 tons of which were sold to the Dalian Xingrong Feed Business Agency in four separate transactions, Xinhua said.

The firm then sold the feed to Dalian Hanwei, which led to the discovery of the melamine in eggs in Hong Kong.

Several brands of eggs have been found contaminated with melamine and agricultural officials speculated that it was due to tainted feed given to chickens.

The discovery came just weeks after melamine-tainted dairy products sickened tens of thousands of children and were linked to the deaths of four infants.

A high intake of melamine can harm the kidneys.

The Macau government said yesterday that it had found a ninth child suffering from a kidney stone after drinking milk possibly tainted with melamine, the Associated Press reported.

The government said the five-year-old girl developed a tiny kidney stone after she consumed school milk supplied by domestic dairy Yili Industrial Group Co.

Zhang Li, head of consumer goods in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said in a notice on the ministry's Website yesterday that about 20 percent of the country's milk producers, or 128 companies, were still shuttered amid efforts to strengthen supervision of the dairy industry.

(Shanghai Daily November 6, 2008)